We recently updated the VRC’s Other Art Resources Online page with links to several Japanese image resources online. These include a link to the Tokyo National Museum‘s website, with a version in English organized by type, region, and what is currently on display at the museum.

Visitors can step inside re-creations of spaces and groupings of sculptural images that no longer exist today. The displays combine digital imagery of the caves with physical artifacts such as three-foot-tall limestone heads of bodhisattvas and the Buddha. The exhibition’s centerpiece is a multimedia installation known as a “digital cave,” designed by artist Jason Salavon, Assistant Professor in Visual Arts and the Computation Institute. Salavon conceived of the cave as an immersive experience, using multiple screens to give visitors a glimpse inside the largest temple at Xiangtangshan.

The article also discusses at length the extensive research undertaken by The University of Chicago’s Katherine Tsiang (exhibition curator) and Wu Hung, among others. This Sunday at 2pm, Jason Salavon will discuss the components of his installation in an Artist Talk at the Smart.

The exhibition will be open from September 30, 2010 to January 16, 2011 and, like all Smart Museum exhibitions, is free.

The first issue of the Trans-Asia Photography Review – a peer-reviewed, open access online journal devoted to the discussion of photography from Asia – is now viewable at http://tapreview.org. It features commentaries or articles by many distinguished scholars, including University of Chicago’s Wu Hung.

One of the most extensive collections of rare Chinese books outside of China will be digitized and made freely available to scholars worldwide as part of a six-year cooperative project between Harvard College Library (HCL) and the National Library of China (NLC)…

…The first phase, beginning in January 2010, will digitize books from the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, which date from about 960 AD to 1644. The second phase, starting in January 2013, will digitize books from the Qing Dynasty, which date from 1644 until 1795. The collection includes materials which cover an extensive range of subjects, including history, philosophy, drama, belles letters and classics.

For more information, visit Harvard College Library’s article describing the project.

Duke University Libraries has launched an online digital collection of about 5,000 photographs shot primarily in China between 1917 and 1932.

The photographs were taken by Sidney Gamble, the grandson of Procter and Gamble co-founder James Gamble, and provide a glimpse into daily life unlike any other photographs from this period. A sociologist, China scholar, and avid amateur photographer, Gamble travelled extensively in China from Liaoning province in the northeast to Guangdong province in the south and to the western edge of Sichuan province along the border of Tibet.

The photographs came to light when Gamble’s daughter, Catherine Curran, discovered the collection at the family’s home. She gave the entire collection to Duke in 2006, just before her death.

ARTstor and the University of Michigan will digitize slides from the archive associated with Asian Art Photographic Distribution, which focuses on the art of East Asia. Areas strongly represented in the archive include Chinese painting, sculpture, bronzes and ceramics, Central Asian Art, and Japanese painting. Many of the objects represented in the archive are richly documented with details.

ARTstor has just added 301 images of Greek, Hellenistic and Roman sculptures from the Collection of Classical Antiquities at the Berlin State Museums.